This episode features an interview with Chloe Shih, Product Manager and Communities Engagement Lead at Discord. Chloe specializes in building products for the creator industry like moderation tools, community engagement features, and safety mechanisms tackling harassment and bullying. She has previously worked for large tech companies like Google, Facebook, and TikTok. In this episode, Cassidy, Zach, and Chloe discuss the power in saying “no,” not taking things too seriously, and following the dreams of your inner child.
This episode features an interview with Chloe Shih, Product Manager and Communities Engagement Lead at Discord. Chloe specializes in building products for the creator industry like moderation tools, community engagement features, and safety mechanisms tackling harassment and bullying. She has previously worked for large tech companies like Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
In this episode, Cassidy, Zach, and Chloe discuss the power in saying “no,” not taking things too seriously, and following the dreams of your inner child.
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Episode Timestamps:
(03:45): What Chloe’s day-to-day looks like
(06:28): What tools Chloe uses
(08:26): How Chloe got into the industry
(13:27): Rapid Fire Questions
(21:06): Random Segment Generator
(29:22): Cassidy’s Sage Advice
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“I think something that I learned that I'm really proud of, that I'm still learning, is saying ‘no’ to others isn't just letting someone else down, but it's saying ‘yes’ to me and that's something I need to keep reminding myself of. [...] You don't want to break this image of you that you can do it all, and the fact is, you can't, which is fine. But you need to know what you're losing when you say ‘yes’ to them.” – Chloe Shih
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Links:
The Dev Morning Show (At Night) YouTube Page
Cassidy Williams: Hello everybody and welcome to the Dev Morning Show (At Night). My name is Cassidy Williams and I am here with my wonderful co-host, Zach Plata. Hey, Zach.
Zach Plata: Hey, Cass. You look like you're in a different spot today. I
Cassidy Williams: am. Go Eagles. I'm in Philadelphia today. Uh, I have recording from my friend's office and it's kind of fun.
It's, it's cool to, you know, be in the land. What are they known for? Pretzels. Medical stuff, not
Zach Plata: Philly. Cheese
Cassidy Williams: sticks. Oh yeah, cheese sticks, duh word. Anyway, we have an amazing guest today, ChloeShih, she is a product manager and communities engagement league at Discord. Welcome, Chloe.
Chloe Shih: Thank you for having me.
Ooh, it's exciting. Exciting. Where are you in the I'm in La.
Cassidy Williams: La. Oh, so sunny.
Chloe Shih: So nice. Born and. . Wow.
Cassidy Williams: Nice. There's some good food out there
Chloe Shih: too. There really is my favorite. That's kind of why I stayed here. Um, but where are both of you located? Like normally
Cassidy Williams: in the world? Yes. Normally I'm in Chicago and so is Zach.
Yeah.
Zach Plata: Oh, okay. We're like 15 minutes away from
Cassidy Williams: each other. Yeah. It's really great for boba runs.
Chloe Shih: Love it. We all need Barbara
Cassidy Williams: runs. Yeah. So Chloe, what are you working on right now?
Chloe Shih: Um, so I am working on the communities team. We essentially build all kinds of product tools to help you build a community on Discord.
Like a lot of people come from Discord to hang out with friends and play video games, but it's grown a lot in the community world. And um, I don't know if you've heard, but we recently launched this product called Forums and it's a space for organized conversation in your Discord community. So you could read more about it on the community portal on Discord.
It's also unlike the Verge and TechCrunch and all that, so that's work. You mean work, right? Like nothing else personal. I'm curious about other things too. Yeah. Okay. Well, something I've been really working on is buying a house in this housing market. Oh, it is awful. Gosh.
Zach Plata: Good luck. Yeah. Sending very good vibes when you're away.
Chloe Shih: I don't have any progress to share except a series of broken hearts like. The emotional turmoil on roller coasters that you gotta go through in this process serious is bananas. So I don't think I would prepare the West Coast. Yeah. LA market. I mean, SF is just so bad, so I didn't even try. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we're in la.
It's not fun, and hopefully something good happens, but I just gotta like, love something and let go of something at the same time. Like detach, but love, which is very
Cassidy Williams: weird. Yeah. Yeah. It, it is honestly like a job because you've gotta go through all these tours, you've gotta put in the offer, you've gotta like assess different things.
It's, it's a
Chloe Shih: journey. It is a journey. Hopeful. Hopefully, I don't know. Hopefully sometime the next year or so. Yeah, then it'll be a good news, but for now, going through it, yeah, good luck. Thank you.
Zach Plata: Well, on that note, it's time for our lovely ad read. The Dev Morning Show (At Night) is a sponsored podcast, means someone has to pay the bills around here we're sponsored by LaunchDarkly.
And LaunchDarkly is the first scalable feature management platform. That means dev teams can innovate and get better software to customers faster. How? By gradually releasing new software features and shipping code whenever. Fast tracking their journeys to the cloud and building stronger relationships with business teams.
Thanks for the money LaunchDarkly.
Cassidy Williams: Okay, so Chloe, what does your day to day look like?
Chloe Shih: Uh, this is pretty hard to say because each day looks very different. My work week, I think it's like easier to talk about it in like the work week. Sure. I recently did an hours log, actually , to see where I put my time into because I like was kind of just going through the motions.
And in a typical workday or like work week, I think I spend the most of my time in meetings, sadly in product management. I
Cassidy Williams: was gonna say for PMs, that seems pretty standard.
Chloe Shih: What? Yeah, I think this is one thing I like didn't think about when I was choosing career paths, when going to product versus like other roles.
It's like a meeting death by meetings all the time, . But anyways, most of the time is product meetings. Team meetings, and. and then the other like portion of my time is one-on-ones. And I literally, last week I literally had like five hours of heads down time only to get work done. Of course. Oh. So I think I actually recently declared one-on-one bankruptcy and purged my recurring one-on-ones and put 'em all like into one meeting so then I could breathe and do work and get off of work early so I can live the rest of my life.
And then go find that. Yes, . Yes.
Cassidy Williams: I feel like that's so necessary though, especially I think doing that hour by hour thing. Smart. I, I'm curious about it just because you, you don't realize how much time you spend on doing things just because it's how you've always done
Chloe Shih: it. Yeah, I had to, I was kind of really, uh, really stressed out.
Really burned out and noticing that I just like go over my boundaries or my limits a lot. Just cuz like, oh, one last thing. It's just so easy at the end of the work day, you're just like, just that one last thing and then half an hour is gone, or two hours are gone. Right. So I think I want to be really diligent, like, I guess back to.
When you ask me what are things I'm working on, um, actually something I'm personally, actively working on is striking a really good balance with work and being healthy with it so that I could go out there and live out my dreams, my inner child's dreams of like doing creative things and just, I don't know, living life.
Because I feel like grind town can get to you a
Cassidy Williams: lot. It
Zach Plata: really can. It is so important. Are, are you, I forget if you mentioned this. Are you a remote working or do you go into
Chloe Shih: an. Um, I am remote, but I do fly into SF quite a bit. Oh, okay.
Cassidy Williams: nice. Yeah, luckily that's an
Chloe Shih: easy flight too. It is an easy flight. It's just annoying when there are like flight delays and, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So especially these days. Airport, not fun. .
Zach Plata: Well, in your kind of day to day of, you know, meetings and you know the stuff that you're trying to get done, what kind of tools are you using?
Chloe Shih: Um, I think if I listed all of them out, there'd probably be like over 10 or something. But I think the main ones really are, like, for my role is notion for PRDs, strategy docs, everything.
Honestly. Note taking one-on-ones, um, raw meeting notes. And then Asana for engineering task management, and then discord for daily work communication, which is a little wild. . Yeah, like my notifications are absurd. ,
Cassidy Williams: I, I was gonna say having Discord for work. I also use Discord for work. It's, it's been an adjustment because it's usually like silly friend games and now it's like, oh, also
Chloe Shih: business.
I know I get anxiety pings and I'm sick. I see the little ping bubble. I'm like, my God. Oh no . But I'm really happy. I, I used to work, um, at, by dance and we would have Lark, so by dance TikTok and then we would use Lark, which is their version of Slack, which is like, if you imagine Google Drive, slack, Google Docs, like everything in mashed into one mega app that also like tracks everything that you do and it has rate receipts.
It was very, very, Oh, major receipts.
Cassidy Williams: The red receipts. Yeah. No, no, thank you. No .
Chloe Shih: Yeah. It also tracks how, how many hours you're online, so No. Yes, no.
Cassidy Williams: Which, I mean, I guess like TikTok tracks everything, so it makes sense. That tracks. Yes. But dang. Yeah, that's, that's a lot.
Chloe Shih: So it was definitely something where you just kind of had to make sure.
Always online, just in case, like they wouldn't say anything. But I, I, I used to work with Alar product manager and he was like, yeah, we definitely pull some productivity reports.
Cassidy Williams: Oh gosh. Well I'm glad you're not in that kind of environment anymore. Yeah. That being said, what kind of got you into the industry in the first place?
Chloe Shih: Um, I was in college study. In pre-med actually. And then I like, I guess I kinda stacked all my courses and was like really immersed into the pre-med community, but then I just realized that people were just way too competitive. Like my roommate was also pre-med and she would steal my chemistry homework from my backpack, copy it, not tell me if I got anything wrong while I was sleeping.
But she'll be like, she'd ask me while I was sleeping. She's like, Hey, can I look at your chemistry homework? Obviously I'm not awake. So she's like, okay, . And I find out she, you know, sometimes you like have vague memories of waking up a little bit while you napping dream. Yeah. And um, yeah, so I just like had a lot of weird experiences.
I just felt premed vibes are really intense. And then when I took my engineering courses, uh, people really didn't care that much to get an A because everyone was like barely passing anyways, . So I just liked the vibe a lot more. I studied industrial engineering and operations research in college, uh, because, not because like I really understood what I was doing in college, but because it was, I made the decision to switch way too late and that.
The path that I could take . Yeah. To be honest. But, um, I was going to school in New York and a lot of the people in this department were like financial engineering majors too. We were in the same groups and same classes, and I just like didn't really like the finance and consulting vibes and I thought tech was so much more creative.
So it was a big, big dream of mind. You like, become an entrepreneur, build a product, and go to the west coast. So here I am . That is awesome. Yeah. I mean, were you both always in the tech industry?
Cassidy Williams: Pretty much would you always know? Yeah. I mean, so, and also Zach and I have known each other for a very long time, so I think we both kind of fed into each other's interest a bit
Um, but for myself, I kind of discovered coding when I was in middle school and I was just like, oh, this is cool. And I, I kind of dove in and never looked back. For my, for myself.
Chloe Shih: Boy, that's so early. That's awesome.
Cassidy Williams: I
Zach Plata: know. And then Cas basically just helped get me interested into it that I followed to college.
And y'all
Chloe Shih: knew Peer Pressure Works school then?
Zach Plata: Yeah, we were in marching band together. I think that's
Chloe Shih: hard. Yeah. Wait, what instrument? I was in marching band too, too. No way. What'd you play? Oh, I pretty standard. I played the flute.
Zach Plata: Nice. Great instrument. Yeah. Clarinet
Cassidy Williams: for me. Okay. Okay. I like it. I floated around.
I, I started on trumpet and I still play it, but I, I played so many brass instruments by senior year I was playing the Big S phone tuba. Oh wow.
Chloe Shih: That's awesome. That's pretty epic. That's
Cassidy Williams: so heavy.
Zach Plata: Is there a brass instrument you haven't played
Cassidy Williams: Trombone. Trump's really cool. I feel like I've played all of the other ones like French horn, melophone, baritone, all of those.
But
Chloe Shih: wait, how did you like buy all the brass instruments? Cause they're like kind of expensive. Do rent. I didn't.
Cassidy Williams: Okay. School. Let me borrow them. .
Chloe Shih: Oh, amazing. I like, yeah, pro tip. Good moves.
Cassidy Williams: Moves lives. . But yeah, Zach is still in a bunch of bands now. He's a really talented clarinet player actually. Oh, that's
Zach Plata: ca
Cassidy Williams: Let me toot your horn. Zach. Let's go.
Chloe Shih: I'd love to hear something later if I could look you up.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. Oh, . Now you have to . No, he's composed pieces for orchestras and stuff. Zach is very legit.
Chloe Shih: That is super legit. Zach, why aren't you saying anything?
Cassidy Williams: Cause. Time for . It's
Zach Plata: like, so it's, it's all fun. Yeah. We, we, we love like playing little musical ideas and, and little songs
Chloe Shih: together.
Is it like orchestral covers or like musicals or what's
Zach Plata: the vibe? I think probably the coolest one I did, um, I did. Like college pep band arrangement of, um, wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus when that came out. And that was like super fun. Um, but yeah, only did that once and I was just like, okay, cool. I, I got to live out my like little Miley Cyrus.
Rebellious fantasy. Yes. Fan fantasy.
Chloe Shih: Wait, that is so dope. You were very talented. I Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's really inspiring. I wanna make a song this year, one of my goals this year, but I have like no idea how to do it, so I'm just staring at my blank page. I'm just like, how? How do I even start?
Cassidy Williams: After the show, you and Zach got a chat.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. We can all
Zach Plata: make a band. .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah, . Okay. Anyway, it is time for rapid fire questions.
We are going to ask you questions rapidly. Um, first one, we all have like domain names, project ideas, things that we're squatting on. What's one of yours?
Chloe Shih: Can't squat on it right now, but the project idea name is palette. Cause I'm like, you know, I have the, I guess like the website colors of clothes. I'm really into this idea of life is really colorful, but I really wanna start like a creative collective to do art with people.
But that domain is taken and it's actually for like a design agency, which makes a lot of sense. Dang. It does make sense. Figure it out. I know. I'm just like, ugh, that's a good idea. Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Dang it. Could figure out like pallet.club or something.
Chloe Shih: Yeah, no, that's, that's kind of cute. Pc. Yeah. Ooh. Could be.
Zach Plata: All right.
Well, I can't wait to see when , that eventually comes out. Um, right. Next one. What is the most recent thing you over optimized?
Chloe Shih: I, to be honest, I don't think I ever optimize anything cuz I feel like I make too many decisions at work. So then I make really poor decisions outside of work. But I will say I'm very proud of racking up my chase points recently, like over the course of the last year to buy a full ticket back to Taiwan for the New Year's.
So nice. All those restaurant dinners worth it.
Zach Plata: That's pretty good. That's a, that's a big skill. There are like Facebook groups and whole articles and tutorials on how to do all of
Cassidy Williams: that. It's a world, it, it's like those coupon clippers, but for points. Yeah,
Chloe Shih: exactly. Yeah. So very happy.
Cassidy Williams: What is your golden rule for coding and working and all that
in
Chloe Shih: general?
Um, I think this recent one that I've been trying to embody is just, It's not that deep for working. At least like if things get really heated, like it's, it's chill. It's just not a big deal. Yeah. My golden rule is just don't take things too seriously. Otherwise, I don't know, we just get anchored on such crazy whiplash decisions and, um, I think everyone's intentions are always really positive and.
In the same direction, but how it comes together can be really chaotic. And that's something that, you know, we don't have to really, I don't know, put too many brain cells on is fine.
Cassidy Williams: I agree. I, I feel like everybody gets very hot and bothered about decisions that like Yeah. It's, it's just, it's just a feature.
Chloe Shih: I know. Yeah. I mean, I get it too. I definitely let it get to me and then I just really want to let go. I feel like that energy I sometimes bring outside of work and I'm very not proud of myself whenever I do that. So that isn't my golden. Continue to embody.
Zach Plata: All right. What is your favorite? It depends.
Question,
Chloe Shih: man. Um, that's a hard question, . Um, I mean, I think I get that a lot in at work, but I don't think I ever enjoy the question. So like, the fact that you're asking me is what your favorite? It depends. Question. . It means it's something I enjoy talking about. So maybe something I don't have like a super clear answer to, but I like talking about is when people ask me what I wanna do five or 10 years down the line.
Mm. I'm just like, oh, it depends. Like, if I stay here then I can do this, but if I've moved to Taiwan, then I can do this. Or, but if I stay in LA Yeah. So I really like, uh, fantasizing about what a future path could look like. . Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Well, and also I feel like the pandemic. Really amplified the fact that we don't know what will happen in the next five years, 10 years, one year, six months or anything.
And so it definitely is, and it depends, question ,
Chloe Shih: it really is. So I'm excited. I'm also nervous. Um, but yeah, that's a big top of mind question that I've been trying to be more intentional about.
Cassidy Williams: Hmm. Yeah. That's fair. , what is the oldest piece of tech that you still own?
Chloe Shih: Um, I don't know what the dates are on all of these, so I might sound like a scrublet, but I think I have my old pixel too.
And then, I mean, I still keep it around cuz I really wanna turn it on, but it's bricked and I just don't wanna, I don't wanna like, Admit that it's gone forever. Um, I had an Nintendo DS to play Pokemon, but I gave it away, so I don't technically own it. I have a PS three to play Kingdom Hearts on. Excellent.
Yeah, that game. Excellent. And then I stole a bunch of Mac chargers from all my previous companies, , and I just cannot part with them even though they're too old. And I don't know what dates they are, but I just. That's what comes to top of mind. Um, it probably have some like camera equipment that I have from early
Cassidy Williams: college,
Chloe Shih: those last, last forever.
Yeah, so that's the gambit. All
Zach Plata: right. Have you written a piece of crunchy code before?
Chloe Shih: Um, as far as I remember, it's probably in university. When I took most of my coding classes, I took some Java c plus plus Python courses. I can't remember anything honestly. Like maybe a hackathon project that was like, Like this, like word game where you have to guess the, a GMAT word while the definition falls.
Or like, it was just so nerdy. So I, I think that was a, it's fun . I don't know about that. It was really Jan and I think it didn't always work, which is, you know, fine. That's what hackathons are for. It sounds like
Cassidy Williams: a hackathon
Chloe Shih: project. Yeah. Um, but after. At work, I really only write sequel queries, which I don't know if is super, that counts.
That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty with that too. I do some really manual pools and I don't, yeah, it's not great . I don't try that anymore, but there it is. . I
Cassidy Williams: get it. What is your favorite tech pun if you have.
Chloe Shih: I don't know. I don't think it's a pun, but I always thought it was really funny when people say cannot repro pep cac, like P E b KC Problem exists between keyboard and chair.
I always found that so funny.
Cassidy Williams: I like that and I've never used it before. pep.
Zach Plata: Yeah.
Chloe Shih: I've never heard of that before. I don't use it, but like whenever I read it and see it, I think it's so funny.
Cassidy Williams: That's, that's an incredibly funny phrase. Yeah. And I'm going to definitely use that now. .
Zach Plata: Yes. It's a thing. Yes. Um, and then lastly, what's your most used emoji?
Chloe Shih: I use the, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's like a wus with a heart, like discord, wus, the mascot. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a cute one. Wus has a heart, and I use that for like, everything like, uh, people write anything in the text channels. I just wont Bizarre. Won't bizarre. nice.
Cassidy Williams: I think it's very discord.
Emojis. They're so much more versatile than the mm-hmm. , like default set.
Chloe Shih: Yeah. But I use that a lot. There are some really good emojis there. I think some of, uh, the teammates I have are big meers and they create emojis and stickers, so it's all like of each other. Sometimes I think it's hilarious.
Cassidy Williams: It is time for the random segment generator.
We're going to ask you something randomly, and the first one is dev. Oops. What's the story of something that you
Chloe Shih: broke? Uh, when I was working at a live streaming startup, we. I was in partnerships at the time. It's not like I went into the code and broke anything, but I was in charge of bringing really awesome creators onto the streaming platform.
And then one of my biggest creators came on for his first night and had so many people come through that the website crashed, like, oh no. Multiple times. And you know, gamers, they like string really late into the night. Yeah. So we had to be at the office at. For a war room. Oh my gosh. For in case of crashes, because we knew like our, our back and couldn't handle it.
So then, um, yeah, it was, it was like a really fun time because it was crashing and it was like success because we got to that milestone, but also really stressful because we couldn't do anything about
Cassidy Williams: it. , it was just like, yay. The website
Chloe Shih: stone. Yeah. It's a milestone. .
Zach Plata: All right. Moving on to the next segment.
It's, I have opposites. So what do you do outside
Chloe Shih: of your day job? I really, I've been going back to voice lessons, singing again. Oh. So I think it's been like an. Kind of an adult passion that I've had. I really, really love singing My register's really high, so I do a lot of like Disney princess songs, but that has led me to really wanting to be a voice actress for Disney type roles or animated roles that, you know, have a, have, have this like aura of wonder and like longing.
Yeah. Coming of age and discovery. So I've been trying to figure that out and I don't know how to do it. So if you have advice, if anyone has advice, like I'm, I feel like a fish out of water, I really wanna do more of it. I love reading stories. I love like embodying a character and then I'm working on different vocal techniques to, I don't know, use my chest.
Oh my God. They'll make more articulate. That's so
Cassidy Williams: cool. Yeah. ,
Zach Plata: this was bringing back to a time, guess we had that one conversation once where you were like, we should get vocal lessons. Chloe's here. She could give us vocal lessons.
Cassidy Williams: I
Chloe Shih: dunno about that. Teaching us now, I, I struggle with it. So I lo you know how you always do like ad.
Oh yeah. Yeah. So whenever I do content, I work with brands. On ad reads, I kind of use that . Mm-hmm. , it's like, okay for me to practice and I just record over and over again to see if I really like the sound of the word. Um, but like imagine if I could just do, I don't know, audiobooks to do long form or animated shorts, I would be so joyful.
Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: That dope. That's so cool. Man. Do you have any other hobbies outside of that?
Chloe Shih: I have a lot of random hobbies that I don't, I'm not always like consistent with, but, um, I love dancing. Like I, yeah, I used to dance a lot more when I was in San Francisco. I used to go to dance studios there and be part of performances, and we perform like at different venues across ss.
Oh. So that was really big, but now I'm back in la and LA dance is just a whole other ballpark. Everyone. I was gonna
Cassidy Williams: say that's an animal of
Chloe Shih: Yeah. Everyone goes to. Get to, they also start so young and they always have full makeup on and they always look so clean. Um, but I'm just there rocking my free texture and that's like not the vibe they were looking for.
I'm just like, Ugh. I'm so nervous to go. One
Cassidy Williams: time I went to a Beyonce dance class in New York City and I, I was just like, oh, it's a fun class. And I like, came in with like sweats. I, I was ready to just like have a good time and everybody there was in like fabulous Beyonce outfits, like stiletto heels and everything.
Yeah. And then it was just kind of like me with sweatbands on. I was like, oh no, what have I done?
Chloe Shih: I just, yeah. Bad choices. It's an investment. You gotta have a whole wardrobe with the right shoes. Yeah. And dance and makeup. Oh, that's a lot. No .
Zach Plata: And if you weren't in this industry, what would you be doing?
Chloe Shih: Mm, yeah, probably voice acting, I think.
Wait, are you talking about realistic ?
Cassidy Williams: Follow your dreams either.
Chloe Shih: Yeah. It really has been a childhood dream to do. , I think I, I kind of like fantasize my day to day going into a recording studio and going over my lines and then just like putting my whole heart into it, spitting into the microphone, you know?
Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. That would be so
Zach Plata: cool. La I feel like that's, if there's any city to be in to do that, I feel like that's a great place to start.
Chloe Shih: Yes. I am fortunate here. Now I just gotta like figure out who I'm supposed to dog to .
Cassidy Williams: Yeah. Yeah. And the last segment is something you're proud of. What's something that you've shipped or created that you're particularly proud
Chloe Shih: of?
I mean, I ship forms, so that's been awesome. But I think that this year was a big year for me. Um, I started my content. I guess company or media group or YouTube channel, like officially. Yeah. And that's
Cassidy Williams: how I first saw your content. It's awesome.
Chloe Shih: Thank you. I'm so glad. Um, but I think what it represents to me is my just, it's a.
I think it's just like this battle cry for me to reclaim my voice and nurture my inner child who's always been dreaming to be a creative. Um, I feel like for the majority of my career, I just focused on tech work and that was kind of my identity, which I'm, I feel really icky about saying , so I, I really wanted to make it a goal of mine.
Foster this version of Chloe outside of work, like who is she? What does she bring to her friends, her loved ones, her community herself. and, um, the process has made me say no to a lot of things, which is really painful for me. I'm a huge people pleaser, but I think something that I learned that I'm really proud of, that I'm still learning is saying no to others, isn't just like letting someone else down, but it's like saying yes to me and that's something I need to keep reminding myself of.
And for someone who. Like is so wired to be like, oh, you need something, you have a request. Let me see what I can do for you. And that just takes up all my time. Um, but the years are passing and my dreams are still, I don't wanna let my dreams to be dreams, you know? Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: So your dreams be memes. Yes, exactly.
Beautifully said. Yes. Artistic. I love that so much that you're saying yes to yourself when you say no to others for some of those things. I think that's so important. .
Chloe Shih: Yeah. And I think what's interesting about it is like I talked to a lot of friends about this and mentors and I think they always ask me like, why are you so afraid of saying no?
And I think the response I give is, I don't wanna feel like I'm letting them down. And then I think their honest answer to me is, you're afraid to let go of this image of you that you can just do whatever they tell you. Like you, you don't want to. You know, you don't wanna break this image of you that you can do it all.
Mm-hmm. . And the fact is you can't, which is fine, but you need to know what you're losing when you say yes to them. Right. So I think the fact that I was like obsessed with being the reliable person that will respond, that will help, um, that image I need to let go of and just to be me. And that probably means I.
Not respond to everything. You know what I mean? Yeah,
Cassidy Williams: yeah. I, I love that so much. And I think that is honestly a perfect place to end it where it's time for Cassidy's sage advice
and. My advice to listen to Chloe , like, well, you, you've said so many great things of the show today, and I think one of my favorite ones is just it's not that deep. A lot of us get so obsessed with our jobs and the things that we're working on that we don't think about our own wellbeing and the things that we actually want to do.
We think about the things that we have to do, and we think about others before we think of ourselves. We don't wanna set ourselves on fire to keep others. And so I really appreciate the advice and your time with us today, Chloe.
Chloe Shih: Mm. I'm really appreciative to be on this show today. Thank you, Cassidy. Thank you, Zach.
I really appreciate it. Yes,
Cassidy Williams: it was fun. It's been great. Now, Chloe, where can people find you on the internet?
Chloe Shih: You can find me on the YouTube. I renamed it to just my name, Chloe Shih, and then Instagram. I'm called thechlobro cause I feel like it's kind of cute rhyme. I never changed it. But, um, on Twitter and TikTok, I am colorsofchloe.
So hope to see you there. Yeah.
Cassidy Williams: Love it. Nice , and once again, because making podcasts is expensive. This show is brought to you by LaunchDarkly. LaunchDarkly Toggles. Peaks of 20 trillion feature flags each day, and that number continues to grow, and you should use them. You can head over to LaunchDarkly.com and learned about how Thank you for making this show possible.
Launch Dark. I've been Cassidy Williams. You can find me at cassidoo, C A S S I D O O on most things. CTO over at Contenda.
Zach Plata: And I'm Zach and I'm a DevRel at Rive, and you can find me on Twitter at Zach
Cassidy Williams: Plata. Thank you for tuning into the Dev Morning Show (At Night). Make sure you head over to our YouTube channel where you can like and subscribe.
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